What We Are Reading Today: The Teacher in the Machine

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Updated 26 April 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Teacher in the Machine

  • Scholars at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s were encouraged by the US government to experiment with computers and AI in education

Author: Anne Trumbore

From AI tutors who ensure individualized instruction but cannot do math to free online courses from elite universities that were supposed to democratize higher education, claims that technological innovations will transform education often fall short.

Yet, as Anne Trumbore shows in “The Teacher in the Machine,” the promises of today’s cutting-edge technologies aren’t new. Scholars at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s were encouraged by the US government to experiment with computers and AI in education.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Planetary Climates’

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Updated 26 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Planetary Climates’

  • As this book makes clear, the better we can understand how various planetary climates formed and evolved, the better we can understand Earth’s climate history and future

Author: ANDREW INGERSOLL 

This concise, sophisticated introduction to planetary climates explains the global physical and chemical processes that determine climate on any planet or major planetary satellite—from Mercury to Neptune and even large moons such as Saturn’s Titan.

Although the climates of other worlds are extremely diverse, the chemical and physical processes that shape their dynamics are the same.

As this book makes clear, the better we can understand how various planetary climates formed and evolved, the better we can understand Earth’s climate history and future.